Non-ambulatory patients who must be supported and moved in a patient facility such as a hospital or a nursing home present substantial challenges when a course of treatment for such patients calls for movement from one location to another. A patient, for example, may need to be moved from a hospital bed, which must remain in the patient's room, to a stretcher and then from the stretcher to a treatment location such as a surgical table in an operating room. Following treatment the reverse patient handling sequence must occur; i.e., the patient must be moved from the surgical table, which remains in the operating room, to a stretcher which travels to the patient's hospital room, and then from the stretcher back onto the bed in the hospital room. In a very large percentage of such occurrences the patient must be handled in a fashion which requires only a minimum of movement of the patient with respect to a supporting surface. In the case of a patient being returned to a hospital room following surgery, for example, the patient's body may not be able to withstand the stresses and strains of being lifted from a stretcher to the bed when one or even several hospital personnel combine their efforts to make such a transfer.
The same challenge of moving a patient with minimum handling exists in non-surgical settings as well. The bariatric patient is a prime and very common example. When such a patient is morbidly obese, transferring presents difficulties for both the patient and the care facility staff. While no exact definition of morbid obesity is universally recognized, many hospitals and other treatment facilities consider a person who weighs about 350 pounds or more to fall within that definition. Movement of a morbidly obese person often requires the hospital staff to physically lift and/or slide the patient from an at rest position on a hospital bed to an at rest position on a stretcher a total of four times to complete a single treatment cycle, such as surgery. The staff must perform the task of lifting and/or sliding such a patient because in nearly all instances the patient, due to the physical condition of obesity and/or illness, simply cannot personally do the task. The manipulation of such a person requires a plurality of hospital staff since such manipulation is impossible to perform by a single person such as a floor nurse assigned to the patient's room. As a consequence, such transfers must be planned in advance for a specific time and a number of hospital staff must be notified and arrange their schedules so that all staff will be available at the same time. As is well known, many hospital staff are females and many of these persons are rather slight of stature. As a result, a half dozen or more such persons may need to be assembled. Instances have been known in which a morbidly obese patient has required twelve persons to effect the transfer. Gathering together such a large number of people four times at often uncertain intervals to provide but a single cycle of treatment raises obvious logistical problems and, in addition, erodes the quality of care the facility can render by reason of the application of such a large number of personnel to deal with but a single patient treatment episode. A further drawback to such a patient handling system, as described above, is that, even with the best intentioned and caring of staff, the patient very often suffers substantial discomfort. The simple act of sliding a patient over a flat surface can be very painful to a patient who has had surgical incisions which are far from healed, for example.
An attempt has been made to overcome the above described problems by the use of an air mattress onto which the patient is placed while in his bed and which is then placed onto a wheeler. A problem common to all such devices is that invariably the air mattress has the general characteristic of a balloon, in the sense that when one area is indented another remote area will bulge, thus creating an unstable condition. If for example a stretcher carrying an obese person makes a sharp turn during a trip to or from a treatment location, such an obese person will tend to roll toward the outside of the turn due to the instability of such a conventional mattress. The more the patient rolls, the more the mattress portion toward which the rolling movement occurs will depress, and the greater will be the expansion of the mattress on the other side of the patient. In effect, the conventional mattress reinforces the undesirable rolling movement and is unstable. Since much of the time the patient is incapable of stopping the rolling action by himself, the patient may roll off the stretcher onto the floor with disastrous consequences. Indeed, even in the instance of a patient who is capable of moving himself to some degree about his longitudinal body axis the same disastrous result may occur because the displacement of air from one edge portion of the mattress to the opposite edge portion creates in effect a tipping cradle. Only if the patient lies perfectly flat and perfectly still on the stretcher, and no roadway depressions or blocking objects, such as excess hospital beds stored in a hallway, are encountered can the probabilities of an accident be lessened.
Another problem with prior art methods of moving patients using an air cushion is the complexity of the procedure. The air mattress must first be positioned under the patient. Then an air pump must be transported to the bed area and connected to the mattress. The mattress is then inflated and the patient moved. The same process is repeated each time the patient needs to be transferred from one bed/stretcher/table to another.
A still further problem with prior art apparatus is control of contamination. Often, a tedious cleaning protocol follows after such use to avoid cross-contamination. Cleaning is particularly difficult because contaminant particles can penetrate into the mattress material, and when the mattress is inflated, contaminant particles may be expelled into the air. The high cost of many prior art air cushions requires their re-use.
Another problem with prior art systems is the process of forcing air out of the small holes in the bottom surface of the air mattress may result in an enlargement of the holes over time, rendering them less effective in levitating the mattress and its load. The consequence of poor levitation is an increase in resistance for lateral transfer and repositioning of the mattress and its load.
A still further problem with prior art systems is the difficulty of connecting and disconnecting an air supply from the air mattress. For example, some prior art air mattresses require inserting an air supply hose into a fabric sleeve in the air mattress in order to inflate the mattress. This requires finding the sleeve in the uninflated mattress, separating the fabric to open up the sleeve and then inserting the hose far enough into the sleeve for the connection to be effective. There is a need for a quicker and easier way of connecting an air hose to the mattress.